


In the Quiet

by stardropdream



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 03:49:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1454299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropdream/pseuds/stardropdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin is not the only one who waits.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> This did not turn out quite like I planned, but I was done fiddling with it and decided to just throw it up. So here you go - because I'm sure this hasn't been done three thousand hundred times already, but. 
> 
> Title shamelessly stolen from a Mumford & Sons song, because that's also super original amiright.

He remembers dying. 

He remembers blinking his eyes open one last time because he hears Merlin call his name and all he wants – all he’ll ever want (he thinks, he knows, he breathes) – is to reassure him, because it’s been so long already, too long, since he last saw Merlin smile and he wants, so very much, to give him what he wants—

But he feels that the touch to the back of Merlin’s head is faint, and he can’t draw him to him. He can’t even speak. He can see that Merlin’s vision is blurring with tears and all he can think is, no, no—

He needs more time—

But that is selfish. Camelot will prosper. Merlin will be alright. Guinevere will be alright. They will move on – and it’s painful, so painful – but they’ll be able to live their lives and he’ll have protected them, at least one last time. And already he can’t feel the pain anymore, because he feels as if he is being dragged into the earth by his feet, sinking down into the ground until he’s part of it, and he mourns because he can’t see Merlin anymore, mourns because the last he saw of Guinevere was already years and centuries and eons ago, but, in the end, dying is not that bad—

And the earth becomes water and he thinks that it must be difficult to breathe, but thankfully he no longer needs to. Already he feels lighter. Floating. Then again, it is water, so there’s no sense of gravity here. His feet touch nothing, and his lungs fill with water. Are they lungs, though? If he does not need to breathe—

But he hears a whisper, a soft, gentle whisper that tells him to kick one last time, to reach out his hand. He obeys, without thinking, kicking through the water, feeling weighted suddenly, grounded by chainmail and human flesh that already feels as foreign as the touch of the water. He reaches out, and his hand closes around the hilt of a sword, his hand chilled from the cool air above the water’s surface. He draws his hand down, and he knows that weight, the familiar and soothing weight of Excalibur. 

He closes his eyes and he sleeps.

 

\---

 

(do they think of him?)

 

\---

 

This is what he does not remember: 

He does not remember waking up. He does not remember forgetting who he is. He does not remember sleeping in the first place. He does not remember forgetting the way a human breathes, the way a human’s heart pumps blood, the way the skin prickles with the chill and tightens with the pain. 

He does not remember what it is to be human. When he opens his eyes, he does not remember what it feels to have a body, what it feels to live in a world with sight and sound and breath that sinks into his lungs and filters out to warm his entire body. He does not remember the sensation of touch, of smell, that feeling of delight when his eyes lock on someone he has loved what feels like his entire life, with his entire being.

He knows that he experienced all these things in his lifetime, knows that it is what made him human, but he does not remember what it felt like. 

His vision blurs when he looks up above him – is it the sky? – and the flickers of light around him suggest the ethereal, the world beyond. There is a tower above him. 

He does not remember. 

 

\---

 

This is what he knows:

The world moves on without him. Opening his eyes, he knows this instinctively – that the world is moving on and he is no longer part of the human world. He knows, instinctively, with every last moment of the body he can no longer feel, that he is of Avalon now. He understands without question that this is Avalon, and not the land of his ancestors, and he is alone on the isle – the grass stretching on for miles, the water lapping gently at the shores, the tower looming high above him. He knows that there is something sliding away beyond him – other presence’s, of creatures no longer human. He knows he is no longer human, either, when he drifts on this isle, surrounded by the fog and the fading grasslands, the lapping of the water. He does not make to move, he stays where he awoke, as if part of the sand and the dirt and the air – the air he no longer breathes but can feel pressed against what were once his cheeks. 

The world moves on without him, and he no longer knows what it feels to be of that world – and yet he looks out over the water, and longs for it. Longs to remember what it felt like – to breathe, to look and see and feel and touch. He longs to find those who he left behind, who have since moved on without him. 

He does not remember what it is to be human, but he still knows that deep, hollow ache. That fear that he is forgotten. 

 

\---

 

He does not remember what it is to be human. Time moves strangely in this land but he knows that seasons have passed – that the day of his death has come and gone at least thrice over. But he does not remember the pain of the blade, even though this body – intangible though it is – bares a scar. He does not remember the sensation of breathing, the sensation of blinking. He does not remember the pain of a heart squeezing too tight in his chest. He blinks his eyes and it feels as if a year has passed by – or a century. He tries to breathe again and it feels as if not even a minute has stretched away beyond his reach. 

He knows he loved. He knows he felt sorrow and joy and horror. He does not remember them. 

He fears, though, sometimes. Or thinks, thoughts heavy, that if he forgets much more he will cease to be – and will never be again. 

He wonders if this is what all the dead face. He wonders why it is he is here.

 

\---

 

This is what he does not know: 

That it is not yet his time. That he is never forgotten. That he is still in waiting. 

 

\---

 

He fears—

And he steps out into the water, to return, to leave, to do something. The last wisps of his humanity whisper at the corners of his mind, and he wants to recapture it. He wades into the water, tries to swim and merely walks, and treads water. 

The pinpricks of his mind warn him that it is not time, but he does not understand and he does not obey.

And he drowns. This at least, is a sensation he has not forgotten – for he has never known it. But his body does not breathe, his body does not need the air and so his lungs fill with water. 

It is not time yet – he feels it in the bones that are no longer his. But he kicks, stubborn, tries to dive deeper into the water, tries to wade back out into the humanity he’s left behind. 

It is not time yet – the voice in his mind – the lady of the lake, he knows, without question, just as he knows all things here without question. The lady of the lake – it is not time—

But he tries. He struggles. 

She is not a lady so much as she is the entirety. He struggles and kicks against her, even though she is not corporeal. But he can feel her – all around him he can know she is there – and she is at once foreign and familiar, understanding and unobtainable. The water swirls around him and he tries to fight. 

But it is not yet time, she says, and the water touches his forehead as if it is a hand, firm but gentle. 

And he sinks down – further and further he sinks, kicking feebly. 

 

\---

 

It is years – decades – centuries – before the words comes to him. Two words that shatter an eternity of quiet that stretches out around him, stiller than the grass that never grows upon the isle. 

_Arthur Pendragon._

He knows the name. It is – was – his name. He closes his eyes to it, tests it in his mind – what’s left of his mind. 

Avalon stretches long and distant around him and he wonders – what was Arthur Pendragon, all those years ago—

He wonders, vaguely, as one does a distant friend long lost to the years and sands of time. He wonders, vaguely, if anyone even knows him anymore. 

 

\---

 

The second name comes to him, then the third—

Guinevere. Merlin.

His heart constricts in his chest – or what is left of a heart. And it startles him, blinking his eyes open wildly at the sky high above him. It shocks him – that he can still feel, that he can still remember what emotions are. He curls into himself, and grasps heavily at that feeling, at that sound of the emotions that scrape down hard inside him. 

He is human. He was human, once. 

He wonders—

———where they are now. If they remember him. If they ever think of him. 

He wonders. 

He wonders and he grasps onto that thought – and doesn’t let go. He closes his eyes to it, lets the pain wash over him – the pain, for the first time in centuries, and he lets himself feel it fully. Pain. Heartache. Longing and loneliness. He feels it all – at once, in a wave, years and years of silence finally crashing down on him and he curls into a ball and weeps, as if he is still young, as if he is still human and alive and hurting. 

And he almost delights in it – that he can still feel. That he can still have longing. That he can still have loneliness. 

And when he opens his eyes properly again, he knows. Knows that it isn’t yet time for him – but that someday it will be.

And someday, he will remember it all –

Not just the pain. Not just the longing. 

 

\---

This is what he does not know:

That though forgotten, he has not ceased to be human. That he could never cease to be of man, for he is the last backdrop of man. He is the last. When he returns, he will be the first and last. 

This is what he does not know: 

That there has never been a man more human than he. 

 

\---

 

He wonders if they remember him. 

He wonders if they remember him as he remembers them – and longs for them, the weight of his pain heavy, grounding him back down to the humanity he almost lost. He touches the scar that jags across his abdomen and focuses on it. 

He imagines the lives they lead – imagines that, someday, he will see them again. Someday, he will not be alone here on Avalon. Someday, he will go to where they are taken, too, and he will see them again. And they will tell him of the lives they led – all of them, not just Guinevere and Merlin. 

He’ll hear it all. He’ll listen to it all. 

And he’ll be able to tell them in turn—

That he longed for them. That he missed them. 

That he loves them. 

 

\---

 

(is he just a memory?)

 

\---

 

(Is he even real?) 

 

\---

 

His bones frost, melt away from him. What little he remembers decays away with the seasons, returning in spring and withering in fall. He cannot remember so many things. But he grasps onto what he can remember, what he can’t bear to forget—

(not to forget again, at least.) 

The darkness descends, as is its way, and he relishes in his pain – more than he thinks he should, more than he feels he can handle. But it is his pain, and he cherishes it – a connection. Painful, and scraping down inside his frosted bones. But they’re his.

(he wonders, despite it all—

do they think of him?) 

 

\---

 

The water ripples. He touches it, and it feels warm – but wet. It’s the first time in so long that he’s been able to remember the touch of it.

And he thinks, perhaps, the time is coming closer.

And he thinks, perhaps, he won’t have to waste away again into this quiet.


End file.
